NBA Early-Career Competition Analysis
Executive Summary
Objective
Examine how rookie- and sophomore-year positional competition affects NBA lottery picks’ scoring trajectories over their first five seasons. Positional competition measures how crowded a player’s role is on their team.
Key Insight
★ After accounting for individual and team-level factors, players facing more competition in their sophomore year start strong but plateau, or even decline in points per game over time, while rookie-year competition slightly boosts baseline scoring without affecting growth.
Methods
Data: Player stats from Basketball Reference, cleaned and processed in Python and R.
Model: Linear mixed-effects model capturing player-level differences over time.
Validation: Confidence intervals and diagnostics ensured reliable estimates.
Visualization: Interactive plots of predicted scoring trajectories.
Quick Takeaways
Sophomore-year competition matters: Players with more competition peak early, then flatten or decline.
Rookie-year competition has smaller effect: Slightly raises baseline scoring without impacting growth.
Overall Pattern: Early-career competition gives modest initial gains that fade over time.
Why It Matters
The methods used here apply beyond sports:
Finance: Modeling portfolio growth under varying conditions.
Healthcare: Tracking patient outcomes over treatment timelines.
Education: Evaluating student performance trajectories in different learning environments.
Deep Dive
The full analysis including data processing, model diagnostics, and detailed results is available: